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“In 1911, acting on authority vested by the recently enacted Food and Drug Act, agents in the United States seized quantities of Coca-Cola syrup because they considered the caffeine content to be a significant threat to public health,” he wrote. “Following lengthy legal proceedings, Coca-Cola agreed to decrease the caffeine content of the drink, and further legal action ceased.” “Armed with improved knowledge of caffeine toxicity and faced with extensive evidence of substantial harm to public health, today’s authorities appear more perplexed and less decisive than their counterparts of more than a century earlier,” James continued. “In light of current international befuddlement and inaction, legislators, policy makers, and regulators of today confront a stark question — how many caffeine-related fatalities and near-misses must there be before we regulate?”

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An Australian mining services company has fired up to 15 workers who performed an underground version of the Harlem Shake and posted it online, in a second incident of the Internet dance craze sparking safety concerns.

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Ronald Carver, author of the 1990 book The Causes of High and Low Reading Achievement, is one researcher who has done extensive testing of readers and reading speed, and thoroughly examined the various speed reading techniques and the actual improvement likely to be gained. One notable test he did pitted four groups of the fastest readers he could find against each other. The groups consisted of champion speed readers, fast college readers, successful professionals whose jobs required a lot of reading, and students who had scored highest on speed reading tests. Carver found that of his superstars, none could read faster than 600 words per minute with more than 75% retention of information.

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Precisely how did the sugar industry engineer its turnaround? The answer is found in more than 1,500 pages of internal memos, letters, and company board reports we discovered buried in the archives of now-defunct sugar companies as well as in the recently released papers of deceased researchers and consultants who played key roles in the industry’s strategy. They show how Big Sugar used Big Tobacco-style tactics to ensure that government agencies would dismiss troubling health claims against their products. Compared to the tobacco companies, which knew for a fact that their wares were deadly and spent billions of dollars trying to cover up that reality, the sugar industry had a relatively easy task. With the jury still out on sugar’s health effects, producers simply needed to make sure that the uncertainty lingered. But the goal was the same: to safeguard sales by creating a body of evidence companies could deploy to counter any unfavorable research.

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The top Australian seller on underground online drug marketplace Silk Road has gone rogue and made off with tens of thousands of dollars, while several other Australian sellers appear to be missing in action. The exodus comes after 32-year-old Paul Howard was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in jail this month by a Melbourne judge after being caught using Silk Road to import a “smorgasbord” of drugs such as cocaine, MDMA and amphetamine, which he then sold. Now Australian Silk Road user EnterTheMatrix, who received dozens of glowing reviews and more than 99 per cent positive feedback selling prescription medication, LSD, MDMA and other substances via express post, has disappeared, leaving behind scores of angry customers who have paid for but not received their items.

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The drug found in the University of South Alabama student who was fatally shot by a police officer in October is a research drug similar, but stronger, than LSD. Officials announced Friday that 18-year-old Gil Collar had apparently taken a tiny amount of 25I-C-NBOMe, known as 25-I before attending the BayFest music festival on Oct. 6. Hours later, he was apparently immune to punches he received from a student whose car window he was trying to climb in. He was able to stand up after a police officer shot him.

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“One time there was this big fight on the yard between the Border Brothers and Gangster Disciples, this was at FCI Manchester in Kentucky, and we were tripping our heads off,” he recalls. “That shit blew my mind. It was like a movie. I literally have flashbacks of that scene to this day. The most vivid image…was this big black dude getting his head busted open by a little Mexican with a pipe… That picture has stayed with me. And it sucked because we got locked down for that shit for three days and I was tripping in my cell the whole time, trying not to freak out.”

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Gurdev Samra’s garden of opium poppies once offered him a euphoric cup of tea, but on Monday it made him the first man in Canada to be convicted of growing the illicit plant. Samra, 63, was handed a one year conditional sentence after pleading guilty to growing 1,200 opium poppy plants at his Calgary home, which was busted by police last July. The judge took a dim view of the poppy garden, despite the fact cultivation of the plants was for personal use in tea —something Samra has done since he was a child in India.

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The flamboyant 65-year-old frontman admits he has shovelled at least $5-6 million dollars worth of marching powder up his nose. In an interview on 60 Minutes this Sunday night, reporter Liz Hayes tells Steve she’d heard around 20 million bucks worth of cocaine had seen the inside nostrils of the ‘Demon of Screamin’. “Realistically, 5 or 6,” says Tyler. “But it doesn’t matter. You also could say I snorted half of Peru, but it doesn’t matter.”

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There’s growing privacy concern over flying robots, or “drones”. Organizations like the EFF and ACLU have been raising the alarm over increased government surveillance of US citizens. Legislators haven’t been quick to respond to concerns of government spying on citizens. But Texas legislators are apparently quite concerned that private citizens operating hobby drones might spot environmental violations by businesses. You may recall the story from 2012 in which a hobbyist operating a small UAV over public land in Dallas, TX accidentally photographed a Dallas meat-packing plant illegally dumping pig blood into the Trinity river, resulting in an EPA indictment. Representative Lance Gooden has introduced HB912 to solve this “problem”.

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The documents provide more details about the surveillance capabilities of the department’s unmanned Predator B drones, which are primarily used to patrol the United States’ northern and southern borders but have been pressed into service on behalf of a growing number of law enforcement agencies including the FBI, the Secret Service, the Texas Rangers, and local police. Homeland Security’s specifications for its drones, built by San Diego-based General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, say they “shall be capable of identifying a standing human being at night as likely armed or not,” meaning carrying a shotgun or rifle. They also specify “signals interception” technology that can capture communications in the frequency ranges used by mobile phones, and “direction finding” technology that can identify the locations of mobile devices or two-way radios.

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Also, you claim that it is environmentally friendly to ride a bike. But if I am not mistaken, a cyclists has an increased heart rate and respiration. That means that the act of riding a bike results in greater emissions of carbon dioxide from the rider. Since CO2 is deemed to be a greenhouse gas and a pollutant, bicyclists are actually polluting when they ride.

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185,000 spyware emails were sent to Aaron’s computers – Technology on NBCNews.com

Spyware installed on computers leased from furniture renter Aaron’s Inc. secretly sent 185,000 emails containing sensitive information — including pictures of nude children and people having sex — back to the company’s corporate computers, according to court documents filed Wednesday in a class-action lawsuit.

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“Premo charged the police like a linebacker, taking out a lieutenant and resisting arrest so forcefully that he fractured an officer’s bone. That’s the story prosecutors told in Premo’s trial, and it’s the general story his arresting officer testified to under oath as well,” Pinto writes. He adds that attorneys for the defendant underwent a lengthy search to try and find video that verified their own account yjpihj, and found one in the hands of Democracy Now. “Far from showing Premo tackling a police officer,” writes Pinto, that video “shows cops tackling him as he attempted to get back on his feet.” The footage obtained from Democracy Now also showed that an NYPD officer was filming the arrest as well, but prosecutors told Premo’s attorney that no such footage existed.

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Yes, Lil Poopy (real name, Luis Rivera Jnr) would agree. He’s a child-rapper, you see, and as he explains in his new song, a cover of French Montana’s Pop That: “Coke ain’t a bad word, it’s only soda.” I take his point. But should a nine-year-old even have an opinion on such matters? No, basically. And now the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families are investigating his father, Luis Rivera Snr, to decide whether the boy’s music career constitutes child abuse. Because he makes one reference to the word “coke”? No. Because he makes numerous references, appears with an adult band called the Coke Boys who know him as “the Cocaine Cowboy”, calls himself “Boston Lou” in homage to legendary cocaine smuggler Boston George, and smacks an adult woman’s jiggling bottom suggestively at the end of the video.

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But now the situation is getting even more insane than you could have imagined: the International Dairy Foods Association (IDFA) and the National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF) have filed a petition with the FDA asking the FDA to alter the definition of “milk” to secretly include chemical sweeteners such as aspartame and sucralose. Importantly, none of these additives need to be listed on the label. They will simply be swept under the definition of “milk,” so that when a company lists “milk” on the label, it automatically includes aspartame or sucralose. And if you’re trying to avoid aspartame, you’ll have no way of doing so because it won’t be listed on the label. This isn’t only for milk, either: It’s also for yogurt, cream, sour cream, eggnog, whipping cream and a total of 17 products, all of which are listed in the petition at FDA.gov.

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An Indonesian woman drowned her nine-year-old son in the bath, claiming she was worried that his “small penis” would affect his prospects for the future, a police spokesman said Thursday. The 38-year-old woman from the capital Jakarta told police her son had had a small penis prior to being circumcised, but that it appeared to shrink further after the operation, police spokesman Rikwanto, who goes by one name, told AFP. “She told police investigators that she killed him as he would have a bleak future with his small penis,” Rikwanto said. “She drowned her son in a bathtub filled with water. She then dressed him and laid him on a bed. After that, she went to a nearby police office to report her crime.”

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A case of anthrax infection has been reported in a user of injectable heroin in France in the Rhone-Alpes, while four other cases, including two deaths, were reported in two other countries in the European Union, it was learned Friday from medical sources. An outbreak of anthrax related to injections of contaminated heroin occurred in 2009/2010, causing the infection of 119 people in Scotland, 5 in England and two in Germany. The infection by the bacterium, _Bacillus anthracis_, was diagnosed in France on July 9 in an intravenous heroin user, aged of 27, who, after a stay in intensive care, is currently convalescing. “He is recovering,” the Director of Public Health ARS-Sydney, Anne-Marie Durand told AFP. “There is [presently – Mod.MHJ] no known link between the four European cases (three in Germany with 1 death and one death in Denmark) and the French case,” she said.

Misspelled tattoos are the gift that keeps on giving. Here are more of the worst crimes ever made against the skin.

Henry Rollins: I looked at the ice cream scoop in my hand…my chocolate-bespattered apron…and my future in the world of minimum wage work…or I could go up to New York and audition for this crazy band who was my favorite. What’s the worst that’s gonna happen to me? I miss a day of work…ooh, there goes 21 bucks. In the audition, he sang every song the band had ever written, improvising most of the lyrics. Then came the scary part: he got the job. Henry Rollins: They said ‘Ok, you’re in.” I said “What do you mean?” They said “you’re the singer in Black Flag.” I said “So what do I do?” They said: “*snort* you quit your job, you pack your gear, you meet us on the road. Here’s the tour itinerary. Here’s the lyrics.”

A wide-ranging surveillance operation by the Food and Drug Administration against a group of its own scientists used an enemies list of sorts as it secretly captured thousands of e-mails that the disgruntled scientists sent privately to members of Congress, lawyers, labor officials, journalists and even President Obama, previously undisclosed records show.

A technique to remove pieces of ovary, store it for decades and then replace it with delicate surgery could effectively put a woman’s menopause ‘on ice’, doctors said. The only thing preventing them from having babies into their old age would be their physical ability to carry a pregnancy, they said. The controversial notion would allow career women peace of mind with a fertility insurance policy so they can find a partner, settle down and become financially secure before starting a family.

✪ One Mighty and Strong: Mormon Prophecy and Mitt Romney

Prior to his death, Smith had written a prophecy declaring that there would one day come a man “mighty and strong” (see scriptural reference at the top of this post) who would bring order to the “house of God”. Many (probably Joseph included) thought this mighty and strong man would be Smith himself. With the loss of their Prophet, Mormons struggled to understand who would fill those mighty shoes. After Smith’s death, a Mormon tradition arose about a Mormon on a “white horse” who would come at a time when the Constitution was “hanging by a thread” and would restore the promised land to the Mormon people.

I just got a new dog from the human society, and I was wondering if it was possible to get him circumcised?

”My advice would be to make sure you leave plenty of room around the groin area and that your pants and trousers feel comfortable so you’re not being restricted in any way. ”Men who wear tight or ill-fitting trousers, or underwear which is restrictive around the groin area could be damaging their health. ”Wearing tight-fitting clothing over a prolonged period of time can lead to urinary tract infections leading to over-activity of the bladder – a type of bladder weakness as well as a low sperm count and fungal infections. ”Please don’t put style before health.” Twisted testicles occur when tight trousers prevent the spermatic cord from moving freely, meaning it twists and leads to testicular torsion which cuts off the blood supply requiring immediate surgery to prevent a gangrenous testicle.

THE device in your purse or jeans that you think is a cellphone — guess again. It is a tracking device that happens to make calls. Let’s stop calling them phones. They are trackers.

Jewish institutions throughout the United States will receive $9.7 million in federal anti-terrorism grants this year out of a total of $10 million allocated to not-for-profit institutions by the Department of Homeland Security. That’s $6 million less than last year. But thanks to sharp cuts this year in the overall pool of money available through this program, the percentage of funds going to Jewish groups has nevertheless jumped substantially. A full 97% of the available funds in the Non-Profit Security Grant Program for 2012 have been allocated to Jewish organizations, compared with 73% that went to Jewish groups from 2007 through 2010. In 2011, Jewish groups received about 80% of NSGP funds.

The boy told investigators it began when Brashear asked him to spot her on the weights, then talked him into going into the tanning booth with her. Once inside, Brashear stripped off her clothes from the waist down and began kissing him, he said. Brashear stated to police she knew the boy was only 15, “there was nothing wrong or illegal about giving someone a kiss” and denied taking off her clothes, the affidavit says.

From February 2000 to April 2011, Griffis operated a tanning bed in a barn on his property at 2261 SE 128th St. in Starke. Customers would pay to use the bed by putting money in a slot. The bed had a two-way mirror, according to the government, and Griffis made a hole in an vent near the foot of the bed. Through the mirror and hole, he recorded customers as they undressed and got in and out of the tanning bed. His victims were “dozens of female customers, including more than 20 minor children,” the news release states. “Griffis produced, collected, and maintained the sexually explicit video recordings … for his own sexual gratification, and kept detailed notes on the types of physical and sexual characteristics of his customers.”

✪ Dog X-ray used in arrest of doctor in prescription probe

The undercover sheriff’s deputy pretending to be a patient in pain presented a Glendora physician with an X-ray to accompany her tale of an injured back and neck. The only problem was the X-ray revealed a “tail” of a different kind — one belonging to a dog. Though the X-ray for a German shepherd had the dog’s name, Recon, and the name of an animal hospital printed on it, the doctor wrote the deputy a prescription for a powerful narcotic painkiller and a muscle relaxant, law enforcement officials said.

An inmate who identified himself only as “Josh” told The Daily that the last time Sandusky was in jail, he and other prisoners serenaded the former assistant coach with a famous line from Pink Floyd’s “The Wall.” “At night, we were singing ‘Hey, teacher, leave those kids alone,’ ” Josh said.

But one item made him stop. Frozen in time beneath a wooden doll house and a century’s worth of dust, Mr. Kissner found a cardboard green box filled with baseball cards. The names sounded familiar — Honus Wagner, Ty Cobb, Cy Young, Connie Mack — and he soon contacted an auction house in Dallas. It was his family’s winning lottery ticket. Experts say the trove of about 700 nearly mint cards just might represent the greatest and rarest discovery in the sports card industry’s history. The best of the collection is expected to fetch more than $500,000 at the National Sports Collectors Convention next month in Baltimore while the entire stock could bring in $3 million.

He and his thug pal had stalked the family back to their home from the laundry, where Guerrero had just finished her weekly wash. “They were eye-balling them — and the chain,” said one police source. The duo attacked as the family got inside the lobby of their building, kicking in the door after the desperate mother had locked it. After neighbors started coming out of their apartments at the sound of the mother’s screams, the crooks fled with the necklace.

The tow truck driver told investigators he saw a naked man masturbating while driving the Cherokee. “The male’s hands were in his groin area moving around,” the police report said. When Casey was eventually pulled over along the side of Interstate 95, it took him a moment to come to a stop because, according to the arresting officer’s notes in the report, he was still trying to get dressed. When the officer asked him why he was driving naked, “Casey stated that he has problems with this and he is getting therapy,” the report said, adding that the man couldn’t explain why he was naked. The officer then patted Casey down and found a toy pistol tied to his leg, part of which was hidden in Casey’s behind. Another portion of the contraption was tied around his genitals, the report said.

Nothing is True, Everything is Permissible. – Hasan bin Sabbah The story of Hasan bin Sabbah is a tale of sex, drugs, myth, and murder. A secluded mountain fortress, a paradisial garden, poison dipped daggers, and covert political maneuverings are the ingredients of this alchemical mixture, which is undoubtedly one of the most intriguing true stories ever told.

“We spend billions and billions trying to interdict the importation [of drugs] into the country, trying to interdict the wholesale and retail of drugs, but when’s the last time someone saw a major public service announcement saying, ‘If you have opiate dependence, there’s treatment available, call this number’?” he asked.

According to the report, the victim heard Olmos say “room service” outside of their roomand the victim told her to “come in.” Olmos asked if they had any dirty towels and if the victim was alone, which he was, according to the police report. Olmos then asked “Can I touch?” The victim responded, “touch what?” Police said Olmos then grabbed the victim’s genitals on the outside of his shorts and said “you hot.” The victim then responded “you’re weird” and walked to the bathroom, waiting for Olmos to leave, according to the report.

The teeth of two of the world’s most famous composers have been stolen from their graves by a man who says he wants to start a museum. The alleged Czech thief who has boasted about his crime on the internet says he wants to now display the famous teeth and dentures he has robbed not just from Austrian waltz king Johann Strauss Jr. and German Romantic composer Johannes Brahms, but from hundreds of other graves as well. Austrian police were alerted to the crime after the grave robber released a video where he can be seen apparently pushing the cover to one of the composer’s tomb open – and pulling out a skull.

New details were revealed to WTVM about an adopted teenager who was allegedly kept in a chicken coop in Taylor County, GA. According to agents at the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, the 15-year-old girl told authorities a shock collar for dogs was placed around her neck and used on her several times. Investigators say a remote key fob was used to shock the girl at will by anyone in control of the collar.

Binney, who resigned from the NSA in 2001 over its domestic surveillance program, had just delivered a keynote speech in which he revealed what Shively called “evidence which we have not seen until this point.” “They’re pulling together all the data about virtually every U.S. citizen in the country … and assembling that information,” Binney explained. “So government is accumulating that kind of information about every individual person and it’s a very dangerous process.” He estimated that something like 1.6 billion logs have been processed since 2001.

“Abuse-deterrent formulations may not be the ‘magic bullets’ that many hoped they would be in solving the growing problem of opioid abuse,” the researchers wrote in the July 12 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

✪ Angry dad beats up facebook pervert

It began recently when the Cookeville man noticed that his 12-year-old daughter was receiving Facebook messages from an adult man he does not know. He asked his daughter about the messages and she did not know the man either. The father looked up the messenger’s Facebook page and there found his date of birth and phone number. He then decided to send messages to the Monterey man while posing as his own daughter. He sent text messages by phone to the man, and the man messaged back, thinking he was communicating with the little girl. Allegedly, he asked to see a photo of her in a swim suit. He also agreed to meet her at Cane Creek Park. But once he arrived there, it was her dad who met him, and he was very angry, according to police reports on the case. Before police arrived on the scene, the two men had a fight, and the Monterey man, who was bleeding, immediately told arriving officers that he deserved it.

While law enforcement and the government would like citizens to believe measures such as these are their way of catching up with the rapid pace of evolving technology in regards to criminal behavior, something more sinister could be at work. Given the interest the Department of Homeland Security has had in Occupy movements around the country as well as some of the more draconian police tactics that have been used on demonstrators, the increased surveillance of internet users and the content they choose to share via social networking, mobile devices or the web, it’s not difficult to call these information requests police state type tactics.

Fresh from performing at Science Gallery in Dublin last night during the opening of Hack the City, an English group of urbanists, technologists and architects who created GPS-enabled quadcopter drones, were held at London Southend Airport on suspicion of terrorism and recorded under the UK’s Terrorism Act. The group, known as Tomorrows Thoughts Today, had been performing their Electronic Countermeasures robotic ballet in the sky show at Science Gallery for the opening of the three-month Hack the City exhibition in Dublin City. The trio, headed up by Liam Young, had created the robotic drones from components that were originally intended for police surveillance. The drones had been swarming around Science Gallery last night to show how they can broadcast their own Wi-Fi network as a flying pirate file-sharing formation.

Just went to the hospital to visit Du Chuanwang. This 13-year-old mother-less child had gone to work in an auto repair shop to help take care of his family ended up having a high pressure pneumatic air pump gun stuck into his anus by two workers who then pumped air into him! The child’s intestines have essentially exploded, his scrotum now as large as a watermelon! His internal organs have all been squeezed together by the air pumped into his body, so horrific!

More than a year after the MPAA and RIAA announced their groundbreaking anti-piracy deal with U.S. Internet providers, the first warning letters are yet to be sent out. Previously, July 2012 was coined as the start date but the responsible parties are still not ready to launch. While TorrentFreak has learned that various ISPs will start the implementation at different times, it remains a mystery which company will be spying on filesharers. casSomewhere in the near future the Center for Copyright Information (CCI) will start to track down online ‘pirates’ as part of an agreement all major US Internet providers struck with the MPAA and RIAA. The parties agreed on a system through which copyright infringers are warned that their behavior is unacceptable. After five or six warnings ISPs may then take a variety of repressive measures, including temporary disconnections.

They are the pride of America – Team U.S.A. – and for the opening ceremonies of the Summer Olympics in London, they’ll be proudly wearing red, white and blue, from beret to blazer. The classic American style – shown in an image above – was crafted by designer Ralph Lauren. But just how American is it? When ABC News looked at the labels, it found “made in China.” Every item in the uniforms that the U.S. athletes will be wearing at the opening ceremony in London will carry an overseas label.

✪ Agenda 21 Micro-Apartment Scheme Being Beta-Tested in NYC

The globalist design for micro-apartments is being championed by New York’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg. These “studio and one-bedroom apartments” will be no bigger than 275 to 300 sq ft. These tiny living spaces are smaller than currently allowed by building regulations, according to a statement by Bloomberg’s office; however the zoning regulations will be waived in over to construct the first of many compact pack ‘em and stack ‘em housing model in the city-owned area of Kips Bay.

A weird octopus with human head and female face caught by a fisherman in Padang, Indonesia. After showing the nature freak to the public and its pictures to be taken , he brought it home along with other octopus and squids to be cooked by his wife.

Because we don’t spend a large chunk of time up there, we haven’t done too much research on the long-term health effects of living on the moon. But a paper titled “Toxicity of Lunar Dust,” covering several aspects of the effects of moon dust on the human body, offers some insight: the moon is basically trying to kill you. Not actively, of course, but there are a lot of reasons to avoid the stuff (and no, a spacesuit isn’t going to save you). The big problem is inhalation; even with a suit, dust can end up back in suit-free living spaces. Then the dust can travel inside travelers’ lungs, causing inflammation and possibly, asbestos-style, even increasing the risk of developing cancer. The particles might be able to travel through the lungs more easily in the lower gravity environment, and exposure to UV and proton radiation could make the dust even more toxic.

✪ Marketers Track Retinas to Find What Draws Consumers

To find out what really draws their test shoppers’ attention, companies like Procter & Gamble Co., Unilever PLC and Kimberly-Clark Corp. are combining three-dimensional computer simulations of product designs and store layouts with eye-tracking technology. And that, in turn, is helping them roll out new products faster and come up with designs and shelf layouts that boost sales.

Mayhew called them “sewer hunters” or “toshers,” and the latter term has come to define the breed, though it actually had a rather wider application in Victorian times–the toshers sometimes worked the shoreline of the Thames rather than the sewers, and also waited at rubbish dumps when the contents of damaged houses were being burned and then sifted through the ashes for any items of value. They were mostly celebrated, nonetheless, for the living that the sewers gave them, which was enough to support a tribe of around 200 men–each of them known only by his nickname: Lanky Bill, Long Tom, One-eyed George, Short-armed Jack. The toshers earned a decent living; according to Mayhew’s informants, an average of six shillings a day–an amount equivalent to about $50 today.

The effort to depict drone warfare as some sort of courageous and noble act is intensifying: The Pentagon is considering awarding a Distinguished Warfare Medal to drone pilots who work on military bases often far removed from the battlefield. . . . [Army Institute of Heraldry chief Charles] Mugno said most combat decorations require “boots on the ground” in a combat zone, but he noted that “emerging technologies” such as drones and cyber combat missions are now handled by troops far removed from combat.

A German man opened the paper one morning to find a photo of himself identified as a wanted terrorist, in what seemed like a thriller plot turned into sinister reality. He still does not know who took the picture of him.

When it came to light that law enforcement has issued millions of annual requests/demands to the wireless carriers (AT&T;, Verizon, etc) to hand over user data, we all got a little concerned. Our carriers know everything about us, and according to findings by Rep. Markey (D-MA), “Information shared with law enforcement includes data such as geolocation information, content of text messages, wiretaps, among others.” But! We have weapons. Here are some tricks to help protect your privacy.

✪ ArtWalk Riot: Police vs Protesters over Sidewalk Chalk [Video]

The LAPD takes sidewalk chalk very seriously. Seriously enough to send 140 riot police to forcibly stop an Occupy LA group from drawing on the sidewalk during LA Artwalk. You can see eyewitness video below. 19 people were arrested after the police attacked the Chalk Walk demonstration with batons, rubber bullets, and tear gas.

“The often very aggressive prejudice against religion as backward, irrational and opposed to science is increasingly defining popular opinion,” said Michael Bongardt, a professor of ethics from Berlin’s Free University who added that the ruling reflected a profound lack of understanding in modern Germany for religious belief.

Explained AFA, “But that’s not the worst of it. Sears also sells books on bestiality and zoophilia. Titled ‘Dearest Pet, On Bestiality’ and “Bestiality and Zoophilia: Sexual Relations with Animals,’ these books are ‘how to’ manuals for people who want to have sex with animals.”

✪ Israel’s ‘Highless’ Marijuana & the CBD vs. THC Conundrum

The Israeli company responsible for developing Avidekel (pictured above), Tikun Olam, is not the first to breed a strain of cannabis that contains almost no THC at all. In 2005, GW Pharmaceuticals (creator of Sativex) grew “virtually mono-cannabinoidic plants that produce high percentages of these target cannabinoids: THC, CBD, THC-V, CBC, CBD-V, CBG or CBN.” Project CBD tested 17 different mothers of Cannatonic – a strain famous for its high CBD levels. Cannatonic #6 was high in CBD with hardly any THC, whereas the other plants were high in THC and low in CBD or high in both. Perhaps the great variety of results from different plants was because the Cannatonic strain is unstable, or perhaps people were getting different results from different growing conditions.

The 18-year-old said she was shopping when a man, who looked to be in his late 30s or early 40s, walked up and asked if her toenails were painted, according to a Columbia County Sheriff’s Office incident report. After replying yes and questioning why he wanted to know, the woman was asked if she’d watched America’s Funniest Home Videos. The man told her he was with the TV show and if she complied with his requests, everything she purchased that day would be free. She said she reluctantly agreed to let him take a photo of her foot. He asked if he could kiss her foot as part of the prank and she agreed. The man guided her to an area behind a clothing rack, dropped to the floor, grabbed her ankle and told her, “Don’t worry. I don’t bite.” He then started sucking on her big toe. The woman said she screamed at him to stop. Before the man ran from the store, he told her, “It tasted so good, though.” Thanks Jasmine

A Delaware company has hit Madonna and her label WB Records with a lawsuit claiming the pop star stole portions of one of their songs for her hit 1990 hit “Vogue,” reports E!. Pointing to a song called “Love Break,” released around 1977, VMG claims, “The portions of ‘Love Break,’ which have been copied into ‘Vogue’ and all its various ‘mixes,’ ‘remixes,’ videos, YouTube versions, etc., are numerous but intentionally hidden. The horn and strings in ‘Vogue’ are intentionally sampled from ‘Love Break’ throughout.” The company also says music producer Richard “Shep” Pettibone facilitated the process by altering the samples after he was originally hired by VMG to remix “Love Break,” later working on “Vogue.” “The unauthorized sampling was deliberately hidden by [Madonna] within ‘Vogue’ so as to avoid detection. It was only when VMG specifically looked for the sample, with the technology available to it in 2011, that the sampling could be confirmed,” VMG said.

A Bronx clothing designer says superstar Jay-Z and his former Roc-A-Fella record label partners owe him $7 million in unpaid royalties for designing the label logo, one of the best known symbols in rap music. In a copyright infringement suit filed in Manhattan Federal Court on Thursday, Dwayne Walker says he created the design. “The logo has become universally recognized as an iconic symbol of Jay-Z, one of the most successful recording artists in the history of popular music,” the suit says. It says Walker came up with the logo in 1995 when Roc-A-Fella was just starting out. The label is now a subsidiary of Universal Music Group.

A school bus driver who was convicted of assault for groping teens and women says an excessive intake of caffeine drove him to the acts. Kenneth Sands, 51, from Seattle, tried to use what is being called the caffeine defense at his sentencing on Tuesday. Sands had been convicted in Lewis County Superior Court of molesting three high school volleyball players and two women during and after a volleyball game in Onalaska on October 18, 2011. Sands says it was caffeine that had driven him to act out of character and that drinking too much caused a psychotic episode.

A study in the August edition of The Journal of School Health finds that the generations old theory of a “gateway drug” effect is in fact accurate for some drug users, but shifts the blame for those addicts’ escalating substance abuse away from marijuana and onto the most pervasive and socially accepted drug in American life: alcohol.

Unfortunately those who have been fantasizing about a romp in which layers of white cotton create the perfect sense of mystery (or bondage), exMormons offer few words of encouragement. Discomfort seems to be the predominant theme. I was continuously battling wedgies–often in public; how the people would stare as I would try to wrestle crumpled material out of my crack. Lady DB If you have ever worn the modern ones you should appreciate the distance these have come. When I first got married they came in a one piece get up with a wide neck so you could step into them. The back had a split crotch (not the kind in kinky panties) but this huge wide sloppy split that would separate under your clothes, leaving a draft in your nether region much of the time. The little panel they sew into the ladies special part was so poorly designed that it would roll and twist till you felt like you were skewered by a roll of old toilet paper.

Facebook and other social platforms are watching users’ chats for criminal activity and notifying police if any suspicious behavior is detected, according to a report. The screening process begins with scanning software that monitors chats for words or phrases that signal something might be amiss, such as an exchange of personal information or vulgar language. The software pays more attention to chats between users who don’t already have a well-established connection on the site and whose profile data indicate something may be wrong, such as a wide age gap. The scanning program is also “smart” — it’s taught to keep an eye out for certain phrases found in the previously obtained chat records from criminals including sexual predators. If the scanning software flags a suspicious chat exchange, it notifies Facebook security employees, who can then determine if police should be notified.

Pemberton tried it with another doctor and some friends on a Saturday in March of 2010. This is how he described the experience: A few minutes later, we were all sitting around in a euphoric haze, smiling benignly but with an incomprehensible, overwhelming desire to dance. It was nearly impossible to keep still. Then things became very vivid and real and everything everyone said suddenly became very important. Before we knew it we were piling into a cab, laughing and giggling uncontrollably and going to a club. The effects lasted for about another two hours …. I’d love to be able to tell you that I had a hideous time when I took mephedrone but the truth is, I didn’t. It was a lovely feeling and I can completely understand why people would use it.

Sometimes when I’m lying in bed at night counting sheep and thinking about the day I often wonder about: 1) ponies and 2) the fact that a bigger deal hasn’t been made about the fact Mitt Romney used to dress up like a police officer in college and pull people over. For fun. College is a time in many Americans’ lives when they do stupid shit like smoke too much pot, drink a lot, or have a lot of sex. That’s considered pretty “de rigueur” in college; these are kinks you work out of your system. You then leave said institution to go through the modern world paying your taxes and doing the right thing. But the GOP presidential candidate had a different gig: instead of drinking and smoking like the rest of America (he claims to have had “one sip” of beer and one drag of a cigarette his entire life, a number we don’t dispute), he would remain perfectly sober and put on a police uniform and pull people over.

This is the new cover to the upcoming Life With Archie #16, the comic which envisions possible futures for Archie characters. And this upcoming issue features the gay inter racial wedding of soldier Kevin Keller and his intended. On the cover. Of an Archie comic. All you folks who have been waiting for the future to happen? This is where it starts. Personal jetpacks are up next.

About 200 customers of the Central Maine Power Company recently noticed something odd after the utility installed smart meters in their homes: in some cases other wireless devices stopped working, or behaved erratically. The 425,000 installed smart meters all broadcast in the 2.4GHz frequency range. Unfortunately, so do many of the consumer gadgets we take for granted these days including routers, electric garage doors, fire alarms, clocks, electric pet fences, answering machines, and baby monitors.

The Senate is going to vote on whether Congress will give this president—and every future president — the power to order the military to pick up and imprison without charge or trial civilians anywhere in the world. Even Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) raised his concerns about the NDAA detention provisions during last night’s Republican debate. The power is so broad that even U.S. citizens could be swept up by the military and the military could be used far from any battlefield, even within the United States itself. The worldwide indefinite detention without charge or trial provision is in S. 1867, the National Defense Authorization Act bill, which will be on the Senate floor on Monday. The bill was drafted in secret by Sens. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) and passed in a closed-door committee meeting, without even a single hearing.

Health and radiation experts are now admitting that the Fukushima disaster is contributing to an unknown number of deaths as a result of increasing cancer rates around the globe. They are also stating that these deaths will be ‘hidden’ from the public eye due to a lack of accurate identification when it comes to targeting Fukushima-related cancer deaths. Of course the scientific experts are focusing primarily on the evacuation zone radiation and surrounding areas, despite the fact that Fukushima radiation is now so far reaching that it is adversely affecting the health of United States citizens.

The FBI has released a new gang assessment announcing that there are 1.4 million gang members in the US, a 40 percent increase since 2009, and that many of these members are getting inside the military

A billboard for Wodka vodka in NYC has been taken down and destroyed after complaints that the advertisement’s message is anti-Semitic. The New York Times reported that the billboard featured a long-haired dog wearing a yarmulke and another dog wearing a Santa hat with the words, “Christmas quality, Hanukkah pricing,” alongside the photo.

BED linen which once belonged to Adolf Hitler is expected to fetch more than £3,000 when it goes under the hammer in Bristol next week. A personalised single bed sheet and pillowcase slip, decorated with the dictator’s initials and the Nazi eagle and swastika, are to be sold by auctioneers Dreweatts on Tuesday.

A virus with the potential to kill up to half the world’s population has been made in a lab. Now academics and bioterrorism experts are arguing over whether to publish the recipe, and whether the research should have been done in the first place. ­The virus is an H5N1 bird flu strain which was genetically altered to become much more contagious. It was created by Ron Fouchier of the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, who first presented his work to the public at an influenza conference in Malta in September.

Ebonics has widely been described as a nonstandard variant of English spoken largely by African Americans. John R. Rickford, a Stanford University professor of linguistics, has described it as “Black English” and noted that “Ebonics pronunciation includes features like the omission of the final consonant in words like ‘past’ (pas’ ) and ‘hand’ (han’), the pronunciation of the th in ‘bath’ as t (bat) or f (baf), and the pronunciation of the vowel in words like ‘my’ and ‘ride’ as a long ah (mah, rahd).” Detractors reject the notion that Ebonics is a dialect, instead considering it a bastardization of the English language.

A grainy video that she filmed in the store on her cell phone shows pink and leopard-print thong panties with no crotches. ‘They’re sized to fit a seven-year-old – that’s just totally inappropriate,’ the mother-of-two said.

Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT) wants Google to add a “terrorist” flag so readers can label terrorist content. Lieberman sent a letter (yes, on paper, but that’s the best way to show the United States Senate letterhead) to Google CEO Larry Page taking him to task because “Blogger’s Content Policy does not expressly ban terrorist content,” and some other details. Lieberman goes on to point out that YouTube, also owned by Google, does ban terrorist content. He adds, quote, “Google’s inconsistent standards are adversely affecting our ability to counter violent Islamist extremism online.” So Blogger could hold back terrorists if it wanted to? Unfortunately, Lieberman doesn’t define what he considers “terrorist content” or whether deleting posts with such content is within the purview of Blogger or the First Amendment. Google, not surprisingly, has yet to comment. Wonder if Larry Page still wished he had Eric Schmidt to handle such political fun and games.

☛ Broward fair ride shares name with Holocaust poison gas

A carnival ride at this year’s Broward County Fair shares a name with the poisonous gas used to kill millions in the Holocaust. The ride is “The Zyklon.” Zyklon B was the name of the lethal cyanide gas used at Nazi death camps. But, the ride’s owner said, that’s definitely not what it’s named for. Zyklon is German for cyclone. Still, it’s offending some in South Florida, home to the most Holocaust survivors in the nation, after New York City.

Moore’s “Dance Music and Nightlife Culture in New York City” seminar at the 310-year-old institution of higher learning also features texts by venerable scholars of the open bar Michael Musto (whose recent piece, “‘Why I Hate Nightlife,” is a tortured love letter to the scene) and Anthony Haden-Guest, who won top prize in Spy magazine’s 1988 Ironman Nightlife Decathlon. Speakers include Madame Wong’s and Red Egg pop-up club mastermind Simonez Wolf, Santos Party House’s Andrew W.K . and Vibe magazine co-founder Scott Poulson-Bryant. Wolf will even create a one-off party at Yale to show the preppies how it’s done. But students shouldn’t stay out late. Moore’s class allows just “one excused absence,” otherwise, they’ll need a note from the dean.

You’re the arbiter of culture for the entire Eastern Seaboard, but you’re pushed out of your table to make way for some sweaty businessman with his collar up who wants to pay $400 for a bottle of booze and some cranberry juice.

The case was postponed after the juror had to be excused while examining photographs of student Karina Barduchian after her death. Maxim Golovatskikh and his friend florist Yury Mozhnov, both 20, are accused of drowning Karina Barduchian, in a bath, then carving up her body and serving her meat with potatoes to a lodger. Before the case was halted, the lodger, Ekaterina Zinovyeva, told the court in St Petersburg they had a party with their Goth friends on the night of the murder in January, 2009.

Collared by the Redding Police Department, Brooks is being held without bail in the Shasta County lockup. Where that forehead greeting will no doubt endear him to fellow inmates.

“What makes this discovery especially significant is that the 2X background radioactivity detected in these peaches was likely significantly attenuated by their water content; when eaten the exposure rate may be significantly higher. Even worse, it is likely that the detected radioactivity is from a longer half life radionuclide; which when eaten, would irradiate a person from the inside out for potential years to come.”

▲ ‘Ching Chong’ food delivery accused of racism

A Monterey Park assemblyman is accusing a Westwood food delivery service of denigrating Asians by using the name Ching Chong Ling Long Gourmet Take-out.

The Pasadena Star-News reports the name is a reference to a racist rant posted to YouTube by former UCLA student Alexandra Wallace.

In the video, Wallace said “ching chong ling long” in her imitation of how Asians sound.

On its website, the takeout service calls itself “C2L2 Gourmet delivery” and says the best way to combat intolerance is through positive cultural experiences and humor.

But that pattern didn’t hold for white men, who on the whole were slightly more likely to die in prison than outside, according to findings published in Annals of Epidemiology.

On June 7, 2011, Earth-orbiting satellites detected a flash of X-rays coming from the western edge of the solar disk. Registering only “M” (for medium) on the Richter scale of solar flares, the blast at first appeared to be a run-of-the-mill eruption–that is, until researchers looked at the movies.

“We’d never seen anything like it,” says Alex Young, a solar physicist at the Goddard Space Flight Center. “Half of the sun appeared to be blowing itself to bits.”

“In terms of raw power, this really was just a medium-sized eruption,” says Young, “but it had a uniquely dramatic appearance caused by all the inky-dark material. We don’t usually see that.”

Solar physicist Angelos Vourlidas of the Naval Research Lab in Washington DC calls it a case of “dark fireworks.”

And so began my quest to hire a rapist. I started by reviewing hustlers’ profiles through escort websites, but I was totally turned off. Even when they said they only serviced women, they all looked like total homos. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against gay dudes. I just don’t want to get raped by one. I knew they wouldn’t be “up” for the job, har har har. I actually had a lot more luck in the “erotic services” section of Craigslist. I didn’t have to go through a middleman, and all the dudes I corresponded with were more than happy to send me cock shots, free of charge.

Starting July 16, McDain’s, a Pittsburgh-area restaurant, will ban children under the age of 6 from its dining area. Restaurant owner Mike Vuick said the policy came in response to complaints he’d received from older customers about kids causing a ruckus. In an email to his clientele, Vuick wrote, “We feel that McDain’s is a not a place for young children … and many, many times they have disturbed other customers.”

A few weeks ago, Malaysia Airlines announced that it would ban infants from flying in the first-class cabin because other passengers had complained about squalling babies. And last February it was rumored that Virgin Atlantic and British Airways had been pressured to consider child-free zones and even child-free planes to appease business travelers who, according to a travel survey, listed unruly children as their No. 1 travel-related complaint.

Headphones on, everyone. The moaning mouth ‘bot is back, this time to sing you a Japanese nursery rhyme. (Freaking you out is a side effect, not the main goal.) Hideyuki Sawada of Kagawa University in Japan brought the mouthbot to Robotech 2011 to demonstrate its new powers. You can watch it below singing “Kagome Kagome,” a children’s song.

The robot, which first started freaking us out last spring, is designed to help hearing-impaired people improve their speech. It’s the most mechanically accurate robot mouth ever, with an air pump to simulate lungs, artificial vocal chords, a resonance tube, a nasal cavity, and a microphone attached to a sound analyzer. It listens to itself and uses a learning algorithm to better mimic the sounds of human speech.

A two-headed snake has gone on display at a zoo in southern Ukraine. The “Skazka” (Fairy Tale) zoo in the Crimean city of Yalta on the Black Sea said on Wednesday that the albino California Kingsnake has two heads that think, react and eat separately, though one is more passive than the other. The head of the zoo, Oleh Zubkov, said that the two heads sometimes compete with each other for food. Zoo workers have to put a barrier between the heads when feeding the snake. The zoo said that healthy serpents of this kind are extremely rare, appearing once in 50 years. The snake will be on display at the zoo until mid-September

“Being an ex-terrorist myself is to understand the mindset of a terrorist,” Shoebat told CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360.”

But CNN reporters in the United States, Israel and the Palestinian territories found no evidence that would support that biography. Neither Shoebat nor his business partner provided any proof of Shoebat’s involvement in terrorism, despite repeated requests.

Restaurant employees in suburban Cleveland told police that the group tried to make off with a painting valued at $157 that was hanging on a wall in the fast-food joint.

▲ Teen seriously hurt in coffee grinder fireworks blast

A Colorado teen is recovering from serious burns he suffered when the fireworks he was attempting to mix in a coffee grinder exploded.

Police say the incident happened Monday when 19-year-old Sean Michael Ogden of Durango was trying to break down fireworks he had purchased so he could turn them into larger fireworks. The blast shook the house of a fire inspector who lives about a quarter-mile away.

Fire marshal Tom Kaufman told The Durango Herald that the friction from the electric grinder could have ignited the mixture.

The Customs Department said 28-year-old Safi Zadeh Hossein was carrying two plaque-shaped sculptures when he was arrested Tuesday on arrival at Suvarnabhumi International Airport from Damascus, Syria.

Customs officials demonstrated to reporters Wednesday how the sculptures were pressed and molded from the illegal stimulant.

Troy Moross of Madison Heights was already dead of a blow to the head when someone removed his genitalia in a “precise surgical fashion,” a medical examiner testified Monday in the first-degree murder trial of Robert Nowak.

Nowak, 51, is accused of killing 26-year-old Moross in February 2001 and leaving his body in a parking lot in Madison Heights.

Investigators linked Nowak to Moross in 2010, after Nowak was arrested in California on a theft charge and his DNA matched that taken from Moross’ body.

But Nowak’s defense attorney, Lawrence Kaluzny, said Moross likely was a victim of a bizarre sexual cult operating in a home in Rochester, where men were mutilated and tortured in the basement of the home.

Remember our story last week, discussing the copyright issues of monkeys taking photographs of themselves using a photographer’s camera that he had left alone? The whole post was about whether or not anyone had a legitimate copyright claim on the photos, noting that the photographer, David Slater, almost certainly did not have a claim, seeing as he did not take the photos, and even admits that the images were an accident from monkeys who found the camera (i.e., he has stated publicly that he did not “set up” the shot and let the monkeys take it). And yet, Caters News Agency has a copyright notice on two of the images, claiming to hold the rights to them. We doubted that the monkeys — who might have the best “claim” to copyright on these photos, if there is one, had licensed the images.

Court documents said neighbors checked on Mendoza’s son, Angelo Jr., after they noticed the father acting nervously and fleeing from his east Bakersfield apartment in his wheelchair. Inside, they found little Angelo naked and bleeding. Police said the boy had numerous bites to his hands and his eyes were swollen shut. Doctors said the boy’s left eye and muscle were completely missing. His other eye was mutilated beyond repair. The boy told them, “My daddy ate my eyes out.” Rodriguez said meanwhile Mendoza approached him at a neighbor’s vacant house down the street. Thanks Patrick Nybakken

He said the crop, which was found in the state of Baja California, about 200 miles/320 km south of San Diego, California, would have yielded about 120 tonnes and was worth about $160 million.

“This is the biggest marijuana plantation we have found in the country,” Duarte said.

The Department of Homeland Security plans to spend more than $300 million over the next four years on radiation-detection equipment that has not been fully tested and may not work, according to a budget request and an unreleased report by the Government Accountability Office.

The department’s plan is the latest in a series of efforts involving the troubled Advanced Spectroscopic Portal machine, which was touted by the George W. Bush administration as an advanced way to prevent the importation of radioactive materials that could be used in a nuclear or dirty bomb.

Mr Pelter has previously carried out major restoration work on buildings including Kensington Palace and Westminster Cathedral and now he is doing his best to restore the popular gorilla image.

The sea area polluted in an oil spill in China’s Bohai Bay was five times as large as Beijing previously announced. A probe conducted by the Chinese State Oceanic Administration found that some 4,240 sq.km of water, or seven times the size of Seoul, were polluted by oil leaks from the Peng Lai 19-3 oilfield in Bohai Bay, the daily Xin Jing Bao reported Wednesday.

Beijing admitted the oil spill for the first time on July 5, a month after two oil leaks occurred at China’s largest marine oilfield on June 4 and 17, saying only 840 sq.km were polluted. But the water quality of a 3,400 sq.km area nearby dropped from Grade 1 to Grade 3.

René Laloux (July 13, 1929–March 14, 2004) was a French animator and film director.
He was born in Paris in 1929 and went to art school to study painting. After some time working in advertising, he got a job in a psychiatric institution where he began experimenting in animation with the interns. It is at the psychiatric institution that he made 1960’s Monkey’s Teeth (Les Dents du Singe), in collaboration with Paul Grimault’s studio, and using a script written by the Cour Cheverny’s interns.

Another important collaborator of his was Roland Topor with whom Laloux made Dead Time (Les Temps Morts, 1964), The Snails (Les Escargots, 1965) and his most famous work, the feature length Fantastic Planet (La Planète Sauvage, 1973).

Laloux also worked with Jean Giraud (Mœbius) to create the lesser known film Les Maîtres du temps (Time Masters) in 1981. Laloux’s 1988 film, Gandahar, was released in the US as Light Years. The US version was redubbed by Harvey Weinstein, from a screenplay adapted by Isaac Asimov. The US version was not as successful as the French version, grossing less than $400,000 on its release.

Laloux died of a heart attack on March 14, 2004 in Angoulême, Charente, Poitou-Charentes, France.

Roland Topor (January 7, 1938 – April 16, 1997), was a French illustrator, painter, writer and filmmaker, known for the surreal nature of his work. He was of Polish Jewish origin and spent the early years of his life in Savoy where his family hid him from the Nazi peril.